On June 22, 1769, Thomas Day turned 21. Long-suffering in his quest to find a perfect woman, he now found himself a free man in possession of substantial income, and elected to find an unspoiled specimen and train her to his liking. Since Day’s habits included bathing in ice water, eschewing fashion and frippery and manifesting “virtue” through suffering, his struggles to find a mate the old-fashioned way are unsurprising. What does come as a shock is his decision to grease the palms in charge of a foundling hospital in order to abduct two orphans, whom he then trained in an unspoken competition to see which he would select for a bride.

How to Create the Perfect Wife follows this quest, which is by turns comic and tragic. Day sought to follow the philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, but his desires were all in conflict with one another: He wanted a woman who was strong and healthy, yet demure and virginal; one who was his intellectual equal, yet willing to live in seclusion with him and defer to his authority in all things. Even by the Enlightenment’s standards, his actions were wildly controversial, and of the two girls he trained, it’s clear that Lucretia, who lost a contest she didn’t know she was involved in, came out the winner overall.

Author and historian Wendy Moore writes with a novelist’s flair and fluidity. She is tough but fair to Day; though his ideas about women were clearly dangerous, he was a fine writer, a loyal if blustery friend and an early supporter of the abolition of slavery. He did ultimately marry a woman to whom he appeared well-suited. Nevertheless, he and his foundlings never escaped being objects of “tea table tittle-tattle” for the remainder of their days, and the scandal was harmful to all concerned. Day’s story echoes the original Pygmalion myth, which was not a love story but a cautionary tale about the limits of omnipotence.

When I say “Davy Crockett,” what do you see? A man in a coonskin cap? The vaguely Taco Bell-ish profile of the Alamo? Or—be honest—did you sing “Davy, DAY-vy Crockett, king of the wild frontier”? You’re forgiven; the song is very catchy, and the guy was a legend, about whom surprisingly little is actually known. In Born on a Mountaintop, author Bob Thompson tries to find the real man behind the myths, but soon discovers that almost every “fact” about Crockett is either the subject of contentious debate or flat-out wrong.

Thompson’s research was inspired by his daughter, who heard “The Ballad of Davy Crockett” in the car and began parsing the lyrics for details. Many biographies combined fact (he was a three-term congressman who advocated for the poor) with folklore (readers may be shocked to discover he could not, in fact, grin a bear into submission)—a tradition Crockett himself encouraged, seamlessly blending celebrity into his political career. So Thompson takes to the road to seek what truths may be found. In Tennessee he sees many places Crockett might have lived, only a few of which are provable as the real deal. At the Alamo, he finds that the debate is not resolved over whether Crockett was executed as a prisoner of war or went down, guns blazing, with bodies at his feet.

A darkly fascinating aspect of Crockett’s legacy is the “Crockett almanacs,” books similar to a farmer’s almanac that combined practical information with tall tales. They were written by East Coast pulp writers, who portrayed Crockett as a racist, chauvinist monster, which got big laughs circa 1839. Later these books were mistaken for real folklore from the oral tradition, which further clouds our view of a man who actually preferred to be called “David.”

This is not to say the book is grim—far from it. The roadside attractions on Thompson’s journey often make a tossed salad of Crockett, Daniel Boone and Paul Bunyan. And watching Thompson and his wife struggle to separate fact from fiction in the “Ballad,” then explain the difference between them to a four-year-old, is a hoot; they end up having to read aloud, “at her insistence,” an entire biography of Andrew Jackson to establish historical context. There’s a fun look at the Disney miniseries that launched a million coonskin caps onto the heads of kids worldwide and made Fess Parker a household name. But Born on a Mountaintop also gives us a look at fame and image in pre-Facebook America and finds that, while the cogs moved more slowly, the machine itself was much the same as the one we know today.

When Warren G. Harding died in office in 1923, in the midst of scandalous behavior by some members of his administration, his relatively little-known vice president, Calvin Coolidge, assumed the presidency. With a strong commitment to service and the dignity of the office and a core belief that less government was better, he restored trust and confidence. Coolidge went on to win a landslide victory in the 1924 presidential race. Many of his fellow Republicans wanted him to run again in 1928 and thought he could have won easily.

As president, he focused intensely on control of the federal budget, and his notable achievements included lowering the federal debt significantly and leaving budget surpluses while at the same time reducing the top income tax rate by half, and bringing unemployment down to three percent. He vetoed most spending bills, including those that would have benefited such groups as World War I veterans and farmers. Amity Shlaes is right on target when, in her enlightening biography Coolidge, she calls him “our great refrainer.” At the same time, the country’s economy grew strongly, and when Coolidge left office the federal government was smaller than it had been when he became president in 1923.

Despite these accomplishments, Coolidge is usually not ranked among our best presidents. One of the primary reasons is that shortly after he left office, the stock market crashed in October 1929, and the country began to descend into the Great Depression. Indeed, some readers may be surprised to learn that, as one of his closest aides recalled, Coolidge had seen economic disaster ahead but believed it was wrong to do anything about it.

Shlaes, author of the bestsellers The Forgotten Man and The Greedy Hand, guides us through Coolidge’s life, from his childhood in Vermont through a political career that lasted most of his adult life, beginning in 1898, when he was elected as a local councilman, until he left the White House in 1929. Along the way he served as a mayor, Massachusetts state senator and governor, where his leadership in dealing with the Boston police strike of 1919 brought him national attention. Shlaes’ detailed description of that event shows how Coolidge, in defense of the law, broke the strike and restored public order. Although the striking policemen did lose their jobs, Coolidge tried to find other positions for them—but not as policemen, and not in Boston.

Coolidge’s response to the greatest national emergency of his presidency perhaps demonstrates most dramatically his beliefs about the national government’s limited role in such a situation. During the disastrous Mississippi River flood of 1927, Coolidge did not think it was appropriate for a U.S. president to go into governors’ territory. He established and tested a policy position for the federal government: rescue operations, yes; reconstruction, no. He believed the latter should be the responsibility of the states. Coolidge did have his commerce secretary, Herbert Hoover, who had extensive experience with relief work, head an effort to help, but Coolidge himself did not visit the afflicted areas, and when his own New England suffered the same kind of natural disaster later, he also refused to go.

Readers will appreciate a glimpse into Coolidge’s personal life as well. Shlaes tells us about the importance of Coolidge’s wife, Grace, in his work and his political career. It was an attraction of opposites: He was a man of few words, while she was outgoing, but both had wide-ranging interests and shared a belief in the importance of family. They were devastated when one of their two sons, Calvin Jr., died during their time in the White House.

Toward the end of his life, Coolidge spoke about the “importance of the obvious.” For him, that included his core beliefs: the importance of perseverance, property rights, contracts, civility to one’s opponents, silence, smaller government, trust, certainty, respect for faith, federalism and thrift. Probably his best-known public statement was, “The chief business of America is business.” But, Shlaes points out, there was a counterweight to business, as he articulated later in the same speech: “The chief ideal of America is idealism.”

In this detailed and illuminating biography, Shlaes helps us to better understand Calvin Coolidge and his era, and makes a strong case that he deserves to be more highly regarded by historians.

Throughout U.S. history, presidents and vice presidents usually have not been close to each other. One has all the power of his office; the other does not. That invariably leads to many opportunities for misunderstandings, slights and mistrust. The mix is especially difficult if the president is an elder statesman and the symbol of victory in World War II, known to the public as being “above politics,” and the vice president is an ambitious young politician with a reputation as a ruthless campaigner.

Such is the situation Jeffrey Frank explores in Ike and Dick: Portrait of a Strange Political Marriage. “There was never a real breach, there was, rather, a fluctuating level of discomfort,” he writes. Dwight Eisenhower’s attitude toward Richard Nixon ranged from “mild disdain to hesitant respect.” Yet their relationship continued—especially through the marriage of Nixon’s daughter, Julie, and Eisenhower’s grandson, David—until Ike’s death in 1969, shortly after Nixon was elected president.

Exactly how their coupling as a political team began is something of a mystery. No one present in the Chicago hotel room where Nixon was chosen by Republican Party leaders seems to have a clear memory of what happened. Eisenhower seems to have taken a back seat in the selection process. Until his own nomination, Eisenhower did not realize that he would need to name a vice-presidential candidate. Three years later, when he was asked about his role in the VP choice, he replied that he wrote down the names of five or six younger men he admired, including Nixon, and said to Republican Party leaders that any of them would be acceptable to him.

The two men barely knew each other, but Nixon understood that any hard partisan campaigning would be up to him while Ike remained, as much as possible, above the fray. This was to remain the pattern throughout their two terms in office, and it affected how the public regarded them. In addition, Ike used Nixon for such unpleasant tasks as firing his chief of staff, Sherman Adams, who had become the focus of a scandal.

Nixon pointed out much later that Ike was “a far more complex and devious man than most people realized.” This first became apparent to Nixon during the initial campaign when reports of a “Secret Nixon Fund,” supported by millionaires, came to light, and Eisenhower did not rush to the defense of his running mate. It was not until the generally positive reaction to Nixon’s nationally televised “Checkers” speech to explain himself that Ike expressed his support.

Frank devotes a revelatory chapter to the circumstances surrounding the speech. Shortly before he went on the air, Nixon was told that “all of Eisenhower’s top advisers” wanted him to end his remarks by submitting his resignation to Ike. Nixon came to understand that this “suggestion” was what Ike also wanted. Nixon refused, and after that neither man felt he could completely trust the other.

Nixon craved Ike’s approval, though, and the maneuvering between the two men to achieve their individual objectives runs throughout the book. Once in office, Ike made lists of other men who would make good vice presidents, and raised questions—both publicly and privately—about Nixon’s suitability for the presidency. In 1955, even before Eisenhower had decided to run for re-election, he proposed that Nixon accept a cabinet position in a new administration. And in 1956, he did nothing to stop the effort to replace Nixon on the Republican ticket.

This lively narrative touches on various personalities whose relationships with Nixon were particularly important. He became close to John Foster Dulles, the secretary of state, who tried to give Nixon a larger role in the administration. Nixon was the one major official at the time who made a special effort to meet regularly with black leaders. He had been on friendly terms with Martin Luther King Jr. for several years when, in 1960, during the run-up to the presidential election, King was arrested after a civil rights demonstration and sentenced to prison in Georgia. Yet when Coretta Scott King contacted both presidential campaigns for help, it was John F. Kennedy who returned her call and helped to obtain her husband’s release. Nixon said he had “frequently counseled with Dr. King and [had] a great respect for him,” but he did not want to make what he called “a grandstand play.”

Anyone interested in U.S. politics will enjoy Jeffrey Frank’s absorbing tale of two very different men and their turbulent relationship.